Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Thursday, June 18, 2009

Get Inside their Heads, Love their Loves

by Eric Verde Martin


In Which I Will Thank Andrew Sullivan


To make amends for my overly harsh criticism of Andrew Sullivan earlier this week (it really was unfair to lump him in with people calling on Obama to speak out more forcefully), allow me to take this opportunity to commend his work in bringing to light the human side of the protesters in Iran.  His has been an invaluable contribution to our political discourse for a number of reasons, not the least in its ability to spark empathy and strengthen bonds across what are fraught cultural and political divides.


By humanizing Iranians, and encouraging Americans to take interest in their plight (one that easily resonates with American ideals of self determination), Sullivan, and those highlighting this ongoing saga, are doing much to break down ethnic/religious stereotypes, normalize perceptions of what has been depicted as an exotic and frightening "other" and build bridges between populations that could really use the thoroughfares. 


It is encouraging to think that this budding spirit of solidarity will make it harder to demonize Iran and more difficult to drum up support for military strikes on a population whose cause has been taken up with such ardor.  It is not an absolute bar by any stretch - populations have been whipped up into war hysteria regardless of such sentimentalities, and despite more significant obstacles.  Hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance are as insidious as they are ubiquitous in human history.  But if it makes another war even a tiny bit less likely, and if it helps the people of Iran and America to see each other in just a slightly more humanistic light, then it will have been well worth the green ink spilt.


(some of this post inspired by an email exchange)



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